Technology can be a band-aid rather than a solution

At least once per day, I’m reminded of the “I love technology” song from the wedding scene at the end of Napoleon Dynamite.

You know the one.  Napoleon’s brother is getting married and sings a song to his bride. I’d link you to a video of that awesome song but none that I found seem to have audio, so I’ll just link you to the lyrics.  The lyrics don’t do the scene justice…you have to watch it if you haven’t (and watch it again if you’ve already seen it).

The part of the song that sticks with me is these lyrics:

Yes, I love technology
But not as much as you, you see
But I still love technology
Always and forever

I’m a geek. No question about it. When I first watched that scene and heard the song, I loved it.  I too love technology.  I’ve been able to do a lot in my life / career because of technology.

But…technology isn’t what we should be ‘loving’.  We should like technology, but we should love the things that technology can do for our coworkers, for our companies and for our customers (and for our lives).

You see, technology is just a means to an end.  Technology isn’t the answer…it never has been.  Many people will tell you to solve your problem(s) with technology, but the technology itself is meaningless unless your solution(s) are focused on the end-goal of maintaining revenue, customer satisfaction, employee morale, etc.

I can’t count how many times over the last few years I’ve heard someone say “just throw Hadoop at that dataset” or “just move your systems to the cloud” as if that was the answer to a problem or problems. Now, they MIGHT be the answer, but we need to make sure we understand the problem entirely before throwing technology at it.

Yes. I do love technology, but not as much as I love solving the real problem(s) that my clients have rather than just covering them up with technological band-aids.